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The Confusion of Healthy Eating

Sometimes, eating healthy can be confusing. I mean, on the surface it isn’t overwhelmingly confusing. In fact, on paper it is very straight-forward and simple. Essentially, all you do is look at every single thing you think is delicious, make a list of it, then realize that every single thing on that list is terrible for you and will eventually destroy you from the inside out. Then you swear off eating all of those things forever, thus guaranteeing that the rest of your life will be bland and flavorless until the day that you shuffle off of this mortal coil.

The confusing part comes in when you attempt to stop that last “flavor-related” bit.

I am a big fan of hamburgers. There has never been a day in my life where the idea of eating a hamburger upset me. I like hamburgers so much that there’s a fair chance that if I were to locate and find a genie, I would use one of those three wishes for a burger right there on the spot. Yes, I would regret the wasted wish, but not until I was done shoveling that burger directly into my face.

While I love hamburgers, though, I know that they’re bad for me. That is why I have spent much of my life ordering something called a “turkey burger.” It’s all the fun of a burger minus much of what makes it delicious. By that, I mean cow. Cow is a very flavorful meat. Turkey, meanwhile, is also a meat. That is where the similarities end. No, turkey burgers are not as good as hamburgers. I, however, followed the rationale that eating this would be better than eating no burger at all.

Then today I went one step further.

While turkey is lean, a burger can be healthier in one way. See, there is no fat in a veggie burger. Vegetables are always healthier than any sort of meat. I think I read that on the internet one time. Or maybe it was some sort of PETA propaganda literature. Whatever the source, it seemed to make sense to me. That’s why I ate a veggie burger today.

So far, nothing seems all that confusing. That is until you find out what sort of veggie burger I was eating. It was a “California Turk’y Burger” by MorningStar. MorningStar only makes vegetarian products. That means I was eating a veggie burger flavored like a turkey burger.

I was eating a replacement for a replacement of a hamburger.

I would love to have been in the pitch meeting for this product.

“Look, team, people are just getting tired of the same old veggie burgers. If we don’t do something right this second, there is a good chance MorningStar will go the way of the Buffalo. Does anyone have any new ideas?”

“Well, boss, I have one. You know how people sometimes eat turkey burgers because they’re healthier? What if we made a veggie burger that was flavored like a turkey burger?”

“But, Jenkins, why would anyone buy a burger that’s flavored like a less delicious burger?”

“I don’t know, sir, but I bet at least one idiot in Nashville will do it.”

If the trend continues, I’m not sure what I will be doing. Maybe I’ll just inhale the scent of a turkey flavored veggie burger. That way I’ll just be consuming air that smells like a burger that tastes like a turkey hamburger. Of course, that might be too many calories. I’m not sure how many calories are transmitted through scent, but it has to be fewer than a veggie burger.

Or, better yet, I’ll just give up on the whole thing and eat hamburger after hamburger until my body cries uncle and I die a hamburgery and very clear unconfusing death.

Sure, I’ll be dead, but what a way to go.

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